Mammals of Aperture Science
by MagicAlpha
Summary: Finding herself in the research complex known as Aperture Science, a rabbit finds herself trying solve all of the experimental test chambers that the Enrichment Center has laid out before her. On top of all that, she unfortunately ends up stumbling into a fox along the way who is totally not making things any easier for her.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: Hello, and welcome one and all to this story that I'm sharing with you all today. This came to me after playing Portal for another time, and reliving every awesome moment of it. After that, the idea for this silly little story came to mind.**

**Now if you've played the Portal games before, I ask that you not expect any sort of seriousness or scientific information from them to be in this story. This is NOT (I repeat, NOT) meant to be a serious story in any way. Instead, this is _intentionally _written to be silly. :)**

**Anyway, hope you enjoy this. As always, please let me know what your thoughts are on this. Feedback, good and bad, is gladly appreciated.**

**Enjoy! :D**

* * *

_Silence…_

It was total silence and nothing more that was reverberating against the square, see-through space. But this wasn't just an average, everyday silence. No, this silence was eeriness at its finest.

A source of fluorescent light in the small area strobed above it, presumably in good need of a replacement bulb. No movement was detectable within the space, nothing entering it and nothing exit at that point in time.

Waking up with a deep breath, the doe covered from her shoulders down in bright orange attire squinted her eyes and pulled herself out of the chamber she had previously been laying down in.

Looking over to the small table to her left, she turned on a small radio beside her and observed her surroundings. With nothing except gray and white walls surrounding her on all sides, nothing seemed to catch the rabbit's attention at the current moment.

_Pretty plain around here, if you ask me, _she thought for a moment. _A little splash of color wouldn't kill anybody. Now then, how in the heck do I get out of here and out to there?_

The bunny's attention dotted over to a spot in the square where some sort of timer was rapidly counting down. The screen was illuminated with a blue light, and the digital numbers were reading that there was thirty seconds and counting. The doe paused a moment, questioning of the nature of the digital countdown clock. _Wait a minute,_ _what is this counting down exactly?_

A bloop sound came from above her, presumably from over a loud speaker somewhere nearby.

"_Hello, and, again, welcome to the Aperture Science Mammal Enrichment Center."_

The rabbit's ears perked at the robotic voice that greeted her. She looked back over at the countdown clock, noticing that it was reaching zero faster than she had expected.

"_A portal will open shortly. In five… four… three…"_

When the automated voice stopped counting down and the clock above reached zero, a beaming orange circle appeared on the side of the space that the doe was occupying. _Guessin' this is the portal, _she thought.

Out of curiosity, the bunny stuck a paw through the orange portal. She then peeked her head through it, and then completely stepped through it. Afterwards, she made her way over to a circular door that automatically opened upon her getting closer.

As she stepped through the doorway, the rabbit entered another hall. A sign to her right lit up, the words "Test Chamber 00" on it next to a few different pictograms.

She surveyed the room. All that was in there was a large, red button and a circular doorway that resembled the one that she had just walked through. A tube seemed to hang down from the ceiling like a stalactite. Opening up, the tube dispensed a large, gray cube onto the floor.

The rabbit walked onto to the red button. When she did, a beep sounded and the doorway unlocked and opened up. Upon stepping off of it, the exit to the chamber closed back up again. Looking over at the cube in the middle of the floor and back over at the button, she shook her head and laughed under her breath.

"Do they think I was born yesterday?" she said out loud. "This test is almost _too _easy."

She picked up the cube, which ended up being a lot heavier than she expected, and placed on top of the button. After the test was complete, she walked through the unlocked doorway, went over to what looked like an elevator and stepped inside of it.

The doe smiled and tapped her foot as the elevator started to ascend. _If all of the tests are as easy as this one, then this should be a snap!_

* * *

**_Several Easy Test Chambers Later…_**

_Alright, _she told herself, _this is _definitely _not gonna be a snap._

After breezing through a few chambers consisting of very easy tests and tasks, the doe ended up getting stuck and confused on one that had a little more intricacy to it.

Instead of staying idly on one wall, portals within the room seemed to open and close after short periods of time. With this small obstacle, the rabbit only had a few seconds to do whatever she needed to do and cross through the portal again before it closed up again.

As much as she didn't want to admit to herself, this one was pretty harder. Officially stumped, the doe grunted, leaned up against the wall and tapped her foot out of confusion.

"Gosh," she started to mutter. "This test chamber's really kickin' my-"

"You're stumped, too?" a voice called out from another side of the room. "Good thing I'm not the only one."

The rabbit looked around, confused as to who said that. Up until now, she thought she was the only one here. Cocking her head the other direction, she caught sight of a tall fox cloaked in an orange outfit similar to what she was wearing. The vulpine shrugged his shoulders as he stood there, a cocky grin on his muzzle.

"What the-" the doe said loudly, unsure of what to think at the moment. "Who the heck are you?"

"The name's Wilde. Nick Wilde. And you are?"

"J-Judy," the rabbit managed to say, telling the fox her name. "How long have you been in here? I didn't even see you until you said somethin'."

"That tells me how observant you are. As for how long I've been in here, I've completely lost track of time. That tells you enough about how long I've been stuck on this chamber."

"So you just gave up and decided to sit here and do nothing?"

"Yeah, pretty much."

"Well _that's _the way to get things solved," the bunny remarked out of complete sarcasm. "It's not like their gonna just come in here and assist us if we ever get confused."

The vulpine huffed. "I get it, Carrots. I don't need you to remind me about what I already know."

The rabbit was taken aback for moment at the fox's words. "Did you just call me Car-"

"So tell me," Nick interrupted. "What brought you to Aperture?"

"I signed up to come here after I heard that they needed some test subjects. Sure, I knew that I wasn't really going to get paid for taking part in this experiment here, but I just wanted to do it for-"

"Wait a minute," the fox interrupted a second time. "They said they weren't paying you?"

"Yeah, why?"

The vulpine's ears drooped in disappointment. "Well that's not what they told _me _when I signed up_. _If they're not paying you, then that means that they sure as heck ain't payin' me."

"What are you talking about?"

"They told me I was gonna make sixty dollars, Fluff. Sixty dollars, _cash_!" Nick grunted and one to hit a spot in the wall behind him. However, an orange portal opened up in the particular spot his paw was aimed at, and the fox ended up losing his balance and falling in.

The portal closed, opening again after a few second delay. The fox got up from the ground, brushed off his fur and walked over to the doe

"This is _not _what they told me when I filled out that application form!" he grunted, repeating himself. Nick stretched his neck and looked around. "Alright, me sitting here and complaining about things isn't gonna help us solve this chamber."

"So what do you insist on us doing?" Judy replied.

After an awkwardly long pause, an idea suddenly popped into Nick's brain. "I just got an idea that might work, Carrots."

"Can you please stop calling me that?"

"No promises." The fox paused a short moment. "Guessing the two of us are partners in this thing, huh?"

"Yay," the rabbit replied, sarcastically. "What an excellent surprise."

Judy listened in on the plan that the fox was devising, mentally sighing at the fact that she was now stuck with the vulpine. _What else could possibly go wrong from here?_


	2. Chapter 2

The circular doorway unlocked, and the fox and rabbit swiftly ran through it into the next test chamber. As they both looked at what the sign said about the chamber to the left of them, a sound came over the speakers again.

The robotic voice greeted the ears of both mammals yet again. "_Due to the requirements of the testing protocol, this test chamber will remain completely unmonitored. Good luck."_

Nick looked up at the ceiling. "Uh, thank you, 'mysterious voice'," he said, looking up at the ceiling where the source of the voice was.

Judy basically snickered at the words of the previous announcement. "Unmonitored my butt," she muttered faintly under her breath, "I'm _pretty _sure I can some mammal watching a screen from that small window above us. Probably spying on us the whole time."

The rabbit was correct in her observance; above them, the faint silhouette of a worker could be seen, more than likely watching them from the cubicle he currently occupied.

An orange portal started to take shape from behind them, only this time it seemed like nothing could pass through it. Instead, it was just a brightly-colored circle of energy upon the gray wall, completely solid in its color and leading to nowhere at all.

"Now, what do we do here?" she whispered to herself.

Looking down from above the platform that she stood on, she saw an object within the middle of the chamber that was a good jump down from where she was located. A tile block with an arrow on it pointed to the object, implying that it had importance.

She took a leap down to where she needed to go, approaching what was in front of her. Placed upon a small platform was some sort of white gadget.

"Come on, Nick," Judy said, gesturing for the fox above her to jump down. "We need to figure out what this thing is."

The vulpine huffed under his breath, not appreciating the fact that the bunny had been giving him directions, such as the one she just did, the entire time. "I see who's tryin' to run the whole show here," he muttered, casually walking along. "Can't believe I'm-"

Before the fox could finish, he ended up tripping on something that was laying on the floor. Losing balance, the vulpine clumsily fell down to where the rabbit was waiting for him.

The doe shook her head at Nick, who now laid there. "That's what you get for murmuring things under your breath," she mocked. "Now come on and check this thing out, you big klutz."

The fox got up from the cold, hard ground. A sudden sensation of pain rushed over him. "Ow, my back!" he complained. "Probably gonna have a bruise or two after that fall."

"I think you'll live."

Shaking her head in denial of how _this_ was who was joining on her trek through the Enrichment Center, she walked up closer to the gadget that rested upon its platform. As she picked it up, she observed the heavy object in all of its glory.

_Bloop! _

The speakers were coming back on again. "_With this device, you can create your own portals._"

"Oh, that makes sense," Nick said. "I was just wondering how the heck we were gonna get back up from here if we didn't have a portal."

"Now let's see…" Judy murmured, looking at the machine to see how in the world it worked.

The fox swiped it out of her grasp. "I take it from here, Carrots."

Judy turned around immediately. "Hey! You don't know how to work that thing. That's not something to just-"

"Relax," the vulpine interrupted, pressing a button on the unique gadget, "I know what I'm doing."

"Yeah," the rabbit muttered, "I've heard that one before."

The fox eyed the device for a short time, definitely not knowing what he was doing. He tried to get the gadget aimed at where he expected it to go. _Let's pray those few lessons of archery I took when I was younger pay off, _he thought.

"Now let's see what _this_ does," the vulpine murmured, pressing what looked like a sort of trigger.

Upon pressing the button, a beam of blue energy shot out from the device. Judy instinctively braced herself and backed away as the energy flew passed the room, landing on a gray wall a few paces in front of them. A portal similar to the one above them opened up, only this time it was a dark blue color instead of orange.

The fox and rabbit both started to walk up to the newly-opened portal, noticing that it lead back to the orange opening on the wall that was above them.

Nick looked over at Judy with that ever-so-sly grin forming on him. The doe looked at him and simply sighed.

"So it's as easy as just pressing a button?" she inquired, changing the subject. "That's all there is to it?"

Nick held the portal device in his grasp, the part of it that shoots out the portals aimed down at the floor as he went along. "Pretty much," he said. "I _told_ you that I knew what I was doing."

He accidentally fumbled the button on the gadget, making a blue portal open up right underneath their paws. The fox and rabbit stuttered a moment as the unexpectedly found themselves back up at where they from.

Judy took the portal device out of Nick's paws, getting back her control of it. "Yeah, I can see that," she remarked. "You better let me handle the portal thing for awhile."

She shot a blue portal over to another gray wall on the far side of the test chamber, and it appeared to be a good jump from the ground. However, a security camera of some sort was mounted a smidge away from where she had created the portal, and it ended up breaking off upon her aiming near it. The doe didn't expect that to happen.

_I guess I need to work on my aim a little bit better, _she thought.

"_Vital testing apparatus destroyed," _the automated voice announced across the loud speakers.

"See that, Carrots?" Nick remarked, his words unnecessary at the moment. "You destroyed a vital testing apparatus, whatever in heaven that even is."

The rabbit grunted as she went through the orange portal behind her and came out the blue one and the other side of the room. Nick followed soon after, and with that the doors opened up to the next part of the chamber.

* * *

_"You are both doing an excellent job so far."_

"Yeah," Judy breathed. "That's because _I'm _solving most of it here."

The fox huffed in denial. "Hey, I helped _some_."

"If anything, I'm doing most of the thinking around here and you're just following my lead."

"Whatever you say."

They stepped inside and found a layout that was alit bit different from the rest of them. The floor underneath their paws was cold and black, the only gray walls within the room were on the ceiling.

Not even a full minute later, Judy managed to get the next portion of the test chamber solved like it was second nature. After she completed the task, her and Nick both went over to the next elevator. When the doors shut behind them, the elevator jerked a bit and started to ascend to their next route.

_Bloop… "Based on your ability to solve the previous test chambers rather quickly, the succeeding tests will be increasing in complexity. The Enrichment Center congratulates you, as you are doing really, really well. Good luck."_

"Great," Nick muttered. "It's gonna get harder from here. 'Cause _that's_ what I needed."

* * *

**_A Few Moments Later…_**

The fox and rabbit darted down the halls, going straight, making a left, and then making a sharp right like they were circling the walls of a labyrinth. From what the previous robotic announcement told them as they ran through the chamber, the next test was potentially dangerous. But there was no way to easily breeze through it, so they pressed forward.

Well, more accurately, Judy pressed forward while Nick dragged along. The fox occasionally nagged about that his paws were starting to ache and that he needed a break from all of the running around.

The doe held up a paw, alerting the fox behind her to stop and stay still. "Wait a second," she whispered, peeking her head around the corner.

As she dotted her eyes to the next part of the room, staying as quiet as possible, her attention over to a sleek, thin robot of some sort that stood there idly on three metallic legs. A red laser projected from the machine for a quick moment before powering down.

"What is it?" Nick said, looking around the corner.

"I think those are called turrets," Judy informed. "There suppose to be a target that we are supposed to avoid completely whenever they're in a test."

"How do you know that? I didn't hear that voice say anything about 'em."

"I read it out of this little manual I found just lying on the floor." The doe was pertaining to a brown, worn-out little booklet was in her one paw.

"Does it say anything else in there on what to do when you see one?"

"No, it looks like a page or two was torn out of this or something." She threw the manual down and steadily tip-toed along, trying not to attract the attention of the turret.

"How convenient," the vulpine huffed. "We're walking into this blindly."

Nick casually walked along, not even attempting but steadily about anything at all. Judy held a paw out trying to get his attention and stop him.

"Nick, don't!" she exclaimed. "They just said the these tests were gonna be dangerous."

"Calm down, Fluff," Nick replied, certain of himself. "It's not like that turret or whatever that is over there is gonna try to kill me."

As the fox walked out into the middle of the small hallway, the turret turned back on pointed its red laser directly at Nick. The sides of the white robot protruded outward. "_Deploying,_" the machine said.

Nick yelped loudly with fear as the turret opened fire. Gasping heavily and clutching his tail, he ran back over to where Judy was hiding. The fox got out of range completely unharmed (_That was a close one, _he suddenly thought), and the only thing the turret managed to hit was a wall that wasn't even close at all to him. While he didn't sustain any injuries at all, it was the thought of the turret's capabilities that made him panic the way that he did.

"_Target lost_," a robotic voice stated, coming from the turret that had its laser scanning the room.

"Okay, take back what I said," Nick said, a paw over his chest as he tried to catch his breath. "That thing is _definitely _going to try to kill me!"

The doe quickly turned around and placed a blue portal underneath the turret, and following it up with an orange portal in a different spot. Judy took a swift step back before she could even be detected by the machine. The robot ended up falling through the portal that the rabbit placed underneath it, getting abruptly knocked over onto its side in the process. After firing at nothing, it sounded like it completely powered down without any signs of kicking back on.

"_Shutting down,_" the turret seemed to whisper from the distance.

"Just listen to what I say and you'll be fine, Nick," Judy remarked.

With that, the doe started running down the clear hall upon seeing that there was no other turrets hidden anywhere. "Come on!"


	3. Chapter 3

The succeeding testing chambers proved be increasing in their difficulty, just as the messages had told them before they proceeded onward. However, the rabbit and the fox managed to get by and solve them within a good allotment of time. Before they knew it, they stated to steadily creep closer and closer to the final test.

As the elevator started to go up, Judy looked back Nick, who stood patiently beside her. Despite the fact that Nick more than often tended to nag and not take the protocol as seriously as she was, the doe surprisingly found herself applauding the suggestions that he made when it came to getting passed previous two chambers.

"You know, Nick," the rabbit remarked, "that was actually pretty good thinking back in the last chamber."

Nick smirked delightedly. "Well, Carrots, as much as I'd hate to toot my own horn..."

"Please don't," Judy replied. "I was just sayin' that you made a good suggestion back there. The idea of opening a portal so those two turrets deployed at each other so we could have a clear path was _actually_ pretty smart."

"Don't mention it, Fluff."

The elevator jerked a little bit, and the floor of the space beneath them shook a little bit. The light that shined above them flickered, going dimmer before it came back to its normal brightness.

"Someone outta do some maintenance on that one," Nick said.

The two strolled forward, staying beside a nearby wall for a short moment. A vent that hung from the ceiling in the antechamber opened up, and an identifiable object dropped onto the black tiles of the floor. The cube was gray like the others they had seen in the previous chambers, but had pink heart designs on each side of it.

From there, Judy used the one mode on the portal device to assist her and the fox in lifting up the cube and taking over to where they needed to head out to. After ascending up a set of tall steps, they paused at a corner for a brief moment.

Judy still had the device lifting up the Weighted Companion Cube, which was getting a little bit heavy to be carrying around like she was. A notable noise of something was coming from the corner, unseeable from where she stood. Instinctively, the doe lifted up the object and made a sort of protective barrier.

Nick cocked his head at the rabbit. "What are you doing?"

"Using the cube to shield us," the bunny replied.

Walking up slowly, the fox replied, "Shielding us from what? There's nothing-"

A yellow energy pellet came flying through, and Nick quickly ran away from it. The ball of energy hit the wall, leaving a black mark on it before it dissipated.

"Ignore what I just said," the vulpine said, shrugging off the fact that he dodged something potentially fatal to him once again.

"Go!" Judy ushered.

The two darted down the halls. Another energy pellet was fired out of an emitter in the distance, and Judy swiftly shielded her and the fox with the cube to avoid getting hit by it. Once the pellet came into contact with their cube "barrier," it ended up ricocheting side to side against the walls around them before dissipating.

With a sharp right, the two came across another tight hallway with another emitter was located. Turning around, the two sprinted their way backwards down the hall with their shield still keeping them safe.

Nick ended up tripping halfway down the space, and he simply laid on his back in an attempt to dodge the deadly energy pellet. When the pellet hit a nearby wall, Judy quickly ran back and grabbed Nick by the paw. The vulpine still laid down on the ground with a small sense of shock as the doe dragged him behind her, turning to the left and heading down the stairs.

Finally getting up from the hard ground and dusting off his clothes, Nick put on a casual smirk. "Piece of cake," he remarked. "Speakin' of, I hope we're gettin' closer to that cake that the voice keeps promising us."

Judy shook her head. The doors opened up, and their next task awaited them as they passed another entryway.

* * *

With Nick now staying put with the portal device now in his grasp, Judy walked up a little bit forward and looked around at what complex task surrounded her and the fox.

The sounds of two portals being shot out from the device came from behind her, and the doe looked to see what was happening nearby.

"Hey, Carrots," Nick remarked. "Check this out. I just figured out this trick and it's pretty cool."

In between the spot that the fox was in, an orange portal was placed right above his head and a blue one right below his paws. After both were made, the fox ended up going through the blue one and coming out the orange one in a rapid, repetitive manner.

"You've. Got. To. Try. This. Fluff," the fox said as he kept flying in and out of the portals repeatedly.

"Nick!" Judy replied, her mind having no time for any of the vulpine's tomfoolery. "Come on, we can't be screwing around in here."

The fox relocated the blue portal, and his chain reaction stopped. "Sorry," he muttered, rolling his eyes.

Nick came over to Judy's right as they looked through the glass enclosure once more before heading through the chamber door, walking down the steps to begin their next test.

"Alrighty, this shouldn't be too difficult," the vulpine said.

Nick surveyed the chamber. On both sides were black walls, of which portals could not be made against. The floor that was beneath them was black in color, too.

Within the middle of the chamber's surroundings were three platforms, a large pool of dark water below it. The platform in the middle of the watery area was gray, and the other two were plain white and seemed to go down into the water and rise back up in short time intervals.

"Pretty sure we're supposed to dodge the water, somehow," Judy replied.

"Why would that water even be an obstacle?" Nick asked in response. "I mean, if you fall in you can just swim back out of it, right?"

"I'm not thinking so, Nick. That looks pretty murky to be safe. I mean, I've seen swamps that look cleaner than that."

The bloop sound came over the loud speakers yet another time, the ears of both mammals perked and listened up. "_To ensure a successful performance of authorized testing, we at Aperture Science believe in giving our valued test subjects beneficial advice. The water found below this particular test chamber will kill you, so please be careful not to come into contact with it."_

"Of course," Nick murmured, sighing once again. "What _isn't_ in this place that's not trying to kill us somehow?"

"Okay," Judy breathed, ignoring the fox's complaints. "On my signal, we both run up to that first platform and leap over to the next one before it goes back down into that water. That thing in the middle is gray, so we can make a portal on it to help get to where we need to be next."

"And you just figured out all of that in your head in a matter of five seconds?"

"Yeah. Even in my youth I've always had a thing for problem solving and such, so I don't mind this kind of difficulty at all. I'm not just some dumb bunny; you should know that already by now, if anything."

She turned her attention back to the middle of the test chamber. The first platform dropped back down into the pool of murkiness, which meant that they had about a few seconds to get ready.

Judy clapped her paws together and motioned to move forward. As the doe ran forward, Nick simply stood there dumbly before realizing that the gesture she had made was the signal.

The moving platform ascended up, and Judy grabbed Nick by his paw and leaped forward. Once they landed, they jumped again to get themselves on to the idle podium. Judy shot a blue portal beneath their feet and and an orange one over to a wall a few feet away from where they stood. The two suddenly transported to the far side of the test chamber within a flash.

The next door automatically opened up, and the two proceeded to walk through.

"_Once again, congratulations. The experiment will be nearing its conclusion soon, and only a small number of test chambers remain to be completed."_

Nick listened attentively, and noticed shortly afterwards that his stomach was starting to growl quite audibly. "Gosh, I'm startin' to get a little hungry," he said, a paw against his stomach. He reached inside the pockets of his orange pants. "It's a good thing that I-" He patted inside of his pockets, realizing that they were completely empty. "What the- But I could've sworn that I had it-"

"What is it?" Judy asked.

"I snuck a candy bar to snack on in my pockets before I came here to start solving the tests. Thought it was still in there, but apparently it's all gone."

"You tried to sneak food into the Enrichment Center and thought it would get passed the forcefield around the final part of chambers?"

"Exactly," Nick replied mindlessly. The fox paused a moment, and then looked at the doe with confusion. "Wait, what are you talking about?"

"You know, that forcefield that's around the elevators before you get in them. We go through it easily, but it was specifically stated that any foreign object that tries to go through it instantly diminishes. And that includes whatever food you were thinking you'd get away with sneaking in here."

The fox wrapped his brain around the dump of information the bunny bestowed to him. "Well, Fluff, you just told me something I didn't know until now. _That's _what that forcefield does?"

"The voice from the speakers told you about that at, like, the first chamber in the whole place. You're telling me you didn't even listen to her when she was telling you about that?"

"I just kinda tuned it out when she was explaining how that worked, I guess."

The rabbit face-pawed. "I can't believe you're being serious with me right now," she murmured, feeling somewhat disappointed. _And to think that I just told him a minute ago about his bright ideas back in the last room, _she told herself.

"Let's just hope I don't get hangry," Nick remarked.

Judy let out a heavy sigh. "Alright, off we go," she breathed. "Only a few more chambers left to go and we're out of here."


	4. Chapter 4

Taking a great leap, Judy dove from the great height down into the gray pit of the chamber, creating a blue portal that she immediately flew through. The doe ended up flying through the orange one on the wall located on the far side of the chamber. With the force and momentum that she created, her trajectory had her going straight down to the pit again. Relocating another blue portal to where she was falling down to again, she breeze through and ended up flying over to the very edge of another elevated platform on the far side of the chamber.

"Now that wasn't so hard, was it?" Judy breathed out, feeling the slight adrenaline from speeding across the course like she just did.

"Nope, not really," a voice replied to the side of her. "It only took me screwing the jump up a few times, but it wasn't that difficult at all."

The doe met up with Nick, who was waiting rather patiently, standing against the black wall to her right. Now that they had both figured out how to get across, the two ran down the passageway to where another tricky incline awaited them. A large, unscalable gray wall was in front of them, a small pool of the deadly water from previous chambers below it with nothing there to protect them from it. From a distance, a small fragment of gray could be detected, where a portal could be possibly be placed.

As he slightly cocked his head over to the left of the chamber, Nick saw something on the other side of him that immediately caught his attention. "Carrots, you gotta look at this," he said, gesturing for Judy to follow him.

Walking over to where the fox was pertaining to, the doe saw what he had his eye on. On the bottom of the wall that they now stood near, a portion of the black blocks seemed to be missing (presumably from when the course had been designed). The considerable crevice that it made within the plain wall looked just big enough for either the fox or rabbit to crawl through, a beckoning streak of white light coming from where the "passage" lead to.

"I say we see figure out where this leads to," Nick said.

"But we still gotta solve the rest of this task," Judy replied, wanting to get things solved so they could get closer to the final chamber. "We're getting so close to-"

"Yeah, we'll get to it," the fox interrupted. "It's not like they're gonna see us sneaking through here or anything."

Judy pointed over to a nearby testing apparatus, a red dot blinking on it as it looked right at them from the gray wall. "Pretty sure they will, Nick," she informed.

"What? You're worried about _that _thing looking us?" The fox swiped the portal device. "Here, I'll take care of the problem."

The fox fired the device near the camera. An orange portal took form, and the camera fell from the wall and entered the murky water with a small splash.

As if on cue, the speakers started to come on again. "P_lease do not destroy any-"_

"Yeah, yeah, don't destroy the apparatus, blah blah blah," Nick blabbed, his voice speaking over the robotic recording. Turning his head around to Judy, he added, "Alrighty, let's head through this wall. It'd be a miracle if this thing was an alternate route to help us get outta here, don't ya think?"

"Still not so sure about this," Judy replied, feeling precautious. "Maybe this is a trick that they put in the chamber to trick you. I dunno, Nick, it seems a little dangerous."

"Good point," the fox admitted, nodding his head. "In that case, Fluff, you go first. Scope the scene a little bit and I'll join you in a few seconds."

Rolling her eyes, Judy got down on her knees and crawled her way through the cranny in the wall. Nick simply watched from where he stood, watching as the doe looked like she disappeared through the light that the fissure casted.

A few seconds after the doe, the fox copied and proceeded to crawl through the open space alongside her. Unlike Judy, Nick had a little bit more trouble fitting through, and was partially concerned that he was going to get stuck. However, his worries proved unnecessary once he got his whole body through the small spot.

The light was no longer that bright whiteness, and proved to be nothing more than the reflection of a halogen bulb from nearby.

Grabbing onto Judy's paw for assistance, Nick got himself out of his crawling position and stood up to look at where the two of them now were. From what Nick and Judy could observe, the space looked somewhere that was definitely off limits for volunteers like them. If it was true, then they stood within a passageway that was meant for Aperture Science workers only.

The walls surrounding the space looked a little bit dilapidated compared to the tidy conditions back in the chambers. An assortment of wooden crates, opened and unopened, were scattered in a corner, and to the right of the two mammals was a rusty set of stairs leading to a slightly elevated metal platform. In addition to the lightbulbs above them, an eerie glow of red illuminated this particular area.

"What is all this?" Judy mouthed out loud.

Nick broke out in a small smile. "Woah," he breathed in response. After a few moments of silence, he added, "Anywho, I guess I better start gettin' a look around here."

"I don't really know what you're expecting to find," the doe replied, kicking the top of a small crate out of her way as she walked around. "There's nothin' even in here except some old boxes and stuff."

"A one-way ticket out of this place, that's what I'm looking for. If there's anything I've learned from the movies, it's that places like this always got some sort of secret shortcut."

"I'm pretty sure they designed this place so you can't cheat, Nick. The only way out is solving all of the tests, and it's as simple as that. No way to get around that."

"Not listening, Carrots," Nick said, impolitely interrupting the doe. The fox walked up to a large, silver door that looked like it lead to somewhere in his mind. "Now then, let's try this door."

As he turned the knob, Nick opened the door and ended up looking straight at the a well-placed turret with its laser aimed directly at him.

"_Activated,_" the turret whispered, its sides opening up.

"Oh snap!" Nick exclaimed.

Reacting on impulse, the fox quickly slammed the door shut as he cursed under his breath. Nick shielded himself in a far corner despite the door protecting him, shielding himself with his paws up. The turret on the other side of the doorway fired at nothing, its bullets hitting against the metal but not causing any damage whatsoever.

The firing stopped, and Nick breathed a sigh of relief. His heart continued to beat at a rapid pace.

"_Searching,_" the turret said, barely audible behind the door. "_Are you still there?_"

Nick grunted at yet another encounter with the menacing robot that he had grown a good hatred for. "A turret," he muttered. "Why in the hell would a turret just be sittin' right in front of the door like that?"

"Probably there to catch foxes like yourself who try to cheat the tests," Judy mocked.

"Har har," the fox huffed.

"So are we done here or what?"

The vulpine turned around and climbed up the corroded, discolored staircase. He made his way to another door at the top of the platform the stairs lead to. Nick tried to open it, but it didn't budge in the slightest. _Great, it's locked_, he thought.

Nick surveyed the area once more before walking down the steps and joining Judy, feeling a gradual sense of disappointment.

"How about we just stick to solving the tests the right way, without trying to cheat?" Judy asked. "The sign said we're on the seventeenth test chamber, you know, so that means there's only two left to go here. Now if we just work together and figure them out as a team, this will all be done before you know it." The doe gestured for the vulpine to come closer. "Come on, Nick, let's get to work!"

With a sigh from the fox, the two got back down on their knees and started to crawl back out of the room they discovered.


	5. Chapter 5

When the doors to the elevator slid open, the two directly rushed down the hallways belonging to the final test of their experiment. The sign illuminated on the left wall, glowing the words "Chamber 19" with a small, plain illustration of a slice of cake underneath it.

They darted to the right and surveyed what potentially challenging puzzle awaited them. _Pretty sure they've saved the most difficult for last, _Judy thought as they entered the room.

Despite it being the last chamber before they were finished, the task didn't appear to be a complex as the previous two they did to get to where they were now.

"Huh," Judy murmured to herself. "You would've at least thought that they'd pull out the big guns for the final test."

Once she completed the task (which was nothing more than simply relocating a flying energy pellet), a small sign lit up yellow with a black checkmark on it. Judy's ears perked up at the sound of something that sounded like a motor revving up. Turning her head around, the rabbit saw a see-through platform starting to move on a beam across a pool of water.

The fox on the other side of the room gestured for her to run forward, but she came over a little too late for the two of them to hop on the moving platform before it went out of view. Even a big leap from the rabbit would have resulted in her falling to her doom.

Nick huffed under his breath as the platform continued to move away like a train pulling out of the station. "That's just great," the fox muttered. "There goes our ride. Now what?"

Judy made a portal on a visible corner in the wall, where a small surface was located for them to safely stand on. The doe shot a portal underneath their paws, and they swiftly transported to their next destination.

"We can just make a portal to get us over there, remember?" Judy asked. "Duh!"

When they saw the platform come into the middle of their vision, Judy declared, "Now, Nick!"

The two jumped, managing to get themselves onto what they needed to be on without any trouble. They simply stood there, catching a few breaths as they moved across the path made by a blue beam below them. Nick peaked his head up, and the platform ended up making a turn down a darker hallway. A sign above them had an arrow pointing to what the two could only assume was where they would finally leave the experiment.

Nick ridiculously pumped a fist in the air. "Yes!" he exclaimed. "We're finally done with this. Now we can-"

"_On behalf of the Enrichment Center, we present you, our valued test subjects, with an interesting fact. The platforms found throughout these particular test chambers are specifically patented with an experimental material, capable of resisting critical elements such as fire and combustion."_

Nick nodded his head. "Hmm, that's good to kn- Wait, what did she just say?" The fox's sensitive sense of smell detected an unpleasant aroma coming from in front of them. He turned his head to the rabbit beside him. "Carrots, is it just me or do you smell something burning?"

Judy held a paw up as an indication for Nick to stop talking. Nodding her head, she sniffed out the area.

The platform that they stood upon made a sudden jerking motion, causing both of them to momentarily lose their balance. They stopped moving at the regular pace and started going at an eerily slow speed. Soon they ended up going through an open space, and into a new area that looked a lot more dilapidated than the rest of the course. The floor beneath the platform's blue beam started to open. Nick and Judy both saw hot flames kindling underneath them, their jaws dropping at the sight.

"_Once again, we at Aperture Science would like to thank you for your participation._"

Nick's ears drooped down and his heart started to beat out of panic. His eyes darting back to the flames that he couldn't help but look at, he felt more certain that his death was about to come sooner than he expected it to.

"Great, we're dead," Nick muttered with frustration.

"Not today," Judy said with determination.

The doe placed a portal on the middle of the deteriorated wall to the left of her, and fired another one to what looked like a safe haven that was a good distance away from the trap of fire.

Judy backed up two steps and ran forward. With a shout, she jumped off of the platform and, luckily, through the portal without falling into the deadly flames.

Nick watched from where he was, nervously gulping as he saw the rabbit came out unharmed a few feet away from him. The platform paused suddenly, starting to rattle back and forth as it reached what was supposedly the end of its directional path. Nick looked down, realizing that what he was standing on was starting to lower itself down into the flames with him on it.

"Nick!" Judy cried out from afar. "You're gonna have to jump!"

"This is insane!" the fox said back, not even thinking straight due to what was unfolding before him.

"Trust me! I'm not gonna let you die, just jump!"

He prayed internally as he did what the rabbit instructed him to do. Shouting out of terror, he jumped. The vulpine flinched, assuming that the worst was about to happen. Before anything could go wrong, however, a gray paw stuck its way through the portal and yanked him through it.

Nick stumbled as Judy pulled him to safety. The fox then squatted down and sat down on the rusty metal flooring below him.

The robotic voiceover came back on, exclaiming, "_This is not the way that was supposed to happen! You were both supposed to fall for the-"_ The loud speakers seemed to go distorted for a brief moment before the bloop sound came through again. "_Please do not attempt to leave the Enrichment Center. One of our designated representatives will be arriving shortly with cake. Once again, please do not attempt to leave the area._"

"No problem," Nick stuttered, laying down on his side with his paws against his head. His heartbeat was faster than it had ever been throughout his entire experience. "I think I'm just gonna stay in this spot for awhile. No fire's gonna try to burn from here."

"You gotta get up, Nick," Judy said, looking down at the fox. "No one's gonna come and get us here, let's just face that." The rabbit extended a paw and pulled the vulpine up from where he was laying down. Surveying the surroundings, she murmured to herself, "So where do we go?"

* * *

**_Some Time Later..._**

Walking down the rickety, decrepit walkway in front of them, Nick and Judy looked at their newly-discovered, worn-out surroundings. Below the height they were walking from, the two gazed down at the mess that made up the spacious, unoccupied area. A small number of thick, black wires hung down from the ceiling, some of them still having a little spark of electricity coursing from the bottom of them.

"Gosh, this place is a dump," Nick remarked. "And these things were walking across are rusty as hell."

A turret was in the middle of the one-way walking, and Nick jumped upon seeing it before fully realizing that it was aiming the other direction. The fox took the portal device from Judy, using it up to lift the white robot from where it was positioned.

The sides of the turret opened up. "_Who are you?_" it asked upon being lifted off of the ground.

"Your worst nightmare," Nick said, smirking delightedly.

The vulpine held the turret over the edge of the railing, finally releasing it and watching as it fired at nothing and started to sink into the foggy pool of water below. With a smile, the fox handed the portal gun back to the rabbit beside him.

"You don't know how good it felt to finally do that," the fox murmured, dusting his paws off. "After all of the close calls that I've had with those things, I'd say all of them deserve the same thing."

The vulpine looked around, not seeing anywhere that could serve as an escape route. He soon approached a door that they could go through, but realized that it was locked and that the only way to open it was knowing the passcode. "We're stuck," he muttered.

"Not quite," Judy replied happily.

The doe looked over at a nearby glass enclosure that looked into what looked like some sort of office. There appeared to be a crack in the glass, luckily large enough for her to try and fire a portal inside the room. She did so, and then created another portal on the wall behind. Nick and Judy stepped up onto the railing to the right of them and leaped through, ending up in a whole different spot of the Enrichment Center.

The spot they were standing within looked completely unoccupied. Desks surrounding them had several computer monitors loading individual programs, others showing footage of the test chambers that came from the cameras within those rooms. Office chairs seemed to be in complete disarray, some of them laying down on the floor sideways while others sat broken without headrests.

Nick took a few steps forward, the sound of his paws tapping as he walked across the tile flooring echoed through the seemingly vacant space.

"Nick, come over here," Judy whispered, pointing her direction.

The fox followed the rabbit, going passed tiny spaces that looked out to various chambers that they could both recall solving.

"What is this place exactly?" Nick asked.

"I'm assuming it's the Enrichment Center's control room or something," the doe replied, continuing to walk ahead. "As long as no one else is up here, everything's gonna be fine."

The two approached a large window, looking into a darkened room. A projector shined within the room, showing presumably boring statistical information regarding Aperture Science. Other than that, no other light source was present within that particular space. The two casually strolled forward, but stopped upon seeing a figure walk by in the blackened room.

The figure of a lion in business attire came near the projector, talking like he was hosting a meeting to others that couldn't be seen. His head turned to where Nick and Judy were standing, visible to him from the other side. The large feline froze for a second, and then pointed a paw out the window.

"Who the hell are they, and why are they back here?" he boomed. The lion turned his head around and pointed back at someone in front of him. "Dawn, get out there and get those two!"

A sheep in a black dress, who they could assume was the "Dawn" that was spoken of, ran up to view, becoming visible next to the lion. "Yes sir, Mr. Lionheart," she said obediently.

The fox and rabbit quickly jolted to the other side of the room and hid as well as they could underneath an unused computer desk.

"You just _had _to say about no one bein' here and jinx us, huh?" Nick mouthed.

The sound of a door opening up nearby came from up close, and the sheep walked out into the office space, her hooves clicking across the flooring as she slowly stepped forward. Darting her head both ways, she didn't seem to find the two that the lion mentioned. With her eyes not detecting anything out of the ordinary, the sheep didn't bother in scanning the area any longer.

"Ehh, there's nothing wrong out here," the ovine murmured, shrugging her shoulders.

Once the sheep went back to the room she was in before, Nick and Judy breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

"Whew," Judy muttered under her breath. "That was a close one."

"Yeah, let's get outta here, Fluff," Nick replied.

Once they saw that the coast was clear, they stealthily made their way to the door a few paces away. Although it had been locked from the outside, a single press of a button labeled "Shut Down" managed to deactivate the locks. With that, Nick turned the handle of the door and made his way back to where they were.

"_Now _what do we do?" the fox inquired, his head turning over to the rabbit following him.

"We'll have to make another jump, but I think we can try to find another route over there," Judy informed, putting to the opposite side of the space.

The doe relocated a portal on the far wall and one behind them. She hurdled herself through with a big jump, landing on another worn-out walkway. Nick copied her actions soon after, and the two reunited on the other side of the dilapidated room.

The leporine pointed a paw to the right. "This way!" she ushered.

The fox did as she had commanded, following her to another dead end. The rabbit discovered a small fracture above them, and fired a portal where a small sliver of gray could be detected. After relocating themselves, the two of them ended up going to a different, higher platform.

Where they currently were consisted of nothing that was considered interesting. Steam seemed to blow out from pipes to the right of them, and to their left they could see familiar ailments from the test chambers ascending up on some sort of conveyor.

Judy ran ahead of the vulpine, making a jump down to another spot that the fox couldn't fully see to. Nick caught up with the doe, seeing that she was only a few steps down from he stood. Jumping down, he met up with her.

The area was a lot darker than the rest of the places they had been running through, with barely any light whatsoever serving as a guide.

_Too bad you weren't allowed to bring your iPaw or something with you to this place, _Nick thought as he looked around. _'Cause that flashlight that's on mine would've came in handy right about now._

The doe looked around and caught sight of a large, red tube that was to the right of them. The tube had several weighted cubes coursing through it, going forward to wherever they might have needed to go to.

Judy turned her head towards what she discovered, seeing that there was a narrow opening within the tube big enough for the two of them to slide right in. If her assumptions were correct, they could be transported by using it in an effort to find their way out quicker. It was definitely large enough in circumference for them to fit, she thought in her head that they would be just fine.

"Do you think you can handle a ride?" the doe asked.

The fox cocked his head, confused. "Can I handle a ride?" he repeated. "What are you even talking about?"

* * *

"Wooo!" Judy exclaimed.

The tube, thankfully, worked just as she assumed they would. With the air pressure being pushed through it, her and Nick luckily were zooming the course that the cubes were going through without any problems. The tube shifted in direction, swiftly going to the right before making a sudden drop downward. In one sense, it felt like it was a roller coaster with as many turns and drops that they went through in the past few seconds.

"This is actually pretty fun, isn't it?" Judy asked, turning her head to the fox a few inches away.

The fox didn't seem to be having as much fun at this particular moment as Judy. Nick's eyes remained widened, the expression on his muzzle consisting of a small bit of fear. "No, it is not!" he replied.

Another steep drop down occurred, and Nick and Judy found themselves landing into a vent that normally dispensed the cubes for each test. The bottom of the vent broke off shortly, and the fox and rabbit were sent tumbling to the floor.

Looking over at a nearby sign, they realized that they were back in the third test chamber.

Nick looked around, feeling perplexed. "What the-" he stuttered. "Carrots, we went backwards! Why are we staring back at the beginning again?"

"Trust me," Judy replied, shushing the fox. "I know where we're going. When I was younger, I didn't get my Survival Skills Badge back in the Bunny Scouts for nothing."

They passed through the chamber, that looked unlike it did from when they were last in it. At the end of the course, they realized the elevator that was normally there was not present. Judy took Nick by the paw, and the two jumped down the circular elevator shaft to some metallic flooring down below.

"_I know you're out there,_" the robotic voice echoed across the speakers in the halls. "_If I were you, I would stop now. Continuing what you're doing is the worst mistake you could make right now._"

Nick shuddered slightly at the warning from the voice. _See what happens when you let robots take over? _he thought.

"Come on," Judy said, getting back up off of the ground. "I see a little bit of light come from the corner, so we gotta be getting close pretty soon."

Nick huffed under his breath. "Let's just pray that the cake's not some sort of lie, Fluff," he complained. "I'm doing all of this running and burnin' way too many calories to not get any."

Judy shook her head. "Just keep your eyes on the prize, Nick," she replied, simply going along with the fox's ridiculous cake concerns. "We shouldn't take _too_ much longer."

"Famous last words, Carrots."


	6. Chapter 6

_"Come on," the fox murmured under his breath, feeling even more defeated. "It feels like we're going in circles! Face it, Carrots, we're trapped in here and there's no way were gonna get out."_

_"Not with _that _way of thinking, we won't," the bunny replied, still remaining hopeful and optimistic in the extremely unfortunate situation._

_A single lightbulb flickered out as Nick continued to run forward, Judy tagging along not too far behind. With the decrease in overall lighting, it was becoming quite difficult for the two of them decipher both what was ahead of them and if there was any other potential route._

_Nick saw a gray door located within a dimly-illuminated passageway coming into view, and he started to get happy. Judging from the specks of fluorescent luminescence peaking its way through the crack within the doorway, the fox mentally concluded that it was a possible exit (or a pathway that lead to an upcoming exit, at least). The luminosity coming through looked like daylight, which the vulpine hadn't seen in quite some time._

_He outstretched a paw and went to place upon the doorknob, but was immediately interrupted by the abrupt sounds of a buzzer coming from nearby. The fox's ears registered the additional sound of a heavy door to the right of him being opened and closed, followed by the pitter-pattering noises of paws running his way._

_On the even darker hall to the right of the vulpine, a beam of bright light coming from some sort of flashlight could be observed. Nick shielded a paw over his eyes when the flashlight ended being shined upon him, Judy doing the same behind him._

_"It's them," an unknown, feminine voice called out from nearby, steadily approaching the fox and rabbit. "They're right over here, you guys. These are the two test subjects."_

_Three figures continued to approach Nick and Judy, two of them appearing to be canids of some sort and the third one being a different type of mammal that was a lot shorter in height. Their silhouettes were only visible from a distance, but the fox and rabbit were able to identify what the three mammals were once they got close enough to be seen without trouble._

_The mammal that was waving the flashlight around the hall was a honey badger cloaked in what looked like the stereotypical scientist lab coat. Trailing behind her were two wolves, one coated in pure white fur and the other having fur with a stormy gray tint to it. Both of them paused within the hallway, putting down the small weapons that they carried in their paws._

_The honey badger slowly took two steps forward, seeing the both nervous and confused look that was written upon on Nick and Judy's muzzles._

_Instinctively, Nick thought it was best to run out of the assumption that the three were up to no good. But the vulpine didn't seem to move a muscle, nor did the rabbit behind him._

_"Carrots?" the fox mouthed to the bunny. "I don't think I trust this badger, do you?"_

_"I think she's okay, Nick," the doe replied. "She's seems pretty trustworthy to me."_

_"My goodness," the badger muttered. "I can only imagine the undoubtable craziness you must've went through to get here."_

_"Yeah," Nick huffed. "Thank you for pointing out the obvious."_

_The honey badger set the flashlight she was holding down and kindly extended a paw, no trace of any evil intentions coming from her whatsoever. Perhaps the rabbit was right in her assumption; this stranger didn't seem to be anyone that they needed to run away from._

_"We offer you the most sincere apologies," the badger continued. "We'll get the two of you out of here as soon as possible." Turning around to the two wolves, she clapped her paws together and gestured for them to come forward. "Gary, Larry, would you please safely escort these two test subjects out of the Enrichment Center?"_

_The wolves nodded in response. The badger backed up out of the way as Nick and Judy were lead down the hall by the two canids. They made a left, being lead to a doorway and down a flight of stairs…_

_"Nick?" Judy said from behind the fox. "Nick…"_

_"Yeah, Fluff?" the fox asked._

_"You need to wake up," the doe replied._

_The vulpine turned around, looking at Judy quizzically. "What?"_

_"Come on, Nick, you gotta wake up!"_

* * *

"Nick!" a voice rung out. "Come on, wake up!"

The fox opened up his eyes, readjusting his vision. The first thing he was becoming fully aware of was someone shaking his shoulders. Turning to the right, Nick saw Judy by his side.

"W-What happened?" the vulpine muttered, his voice still groggy after being waken up out of a good nap.

Judy looked down at Nick, who had fallen asleep sitting in an upright position, leaning against a metal beam.

"I told you we could sit down for a few minutes," Judy replied. "But I didn't think that you were just gonna literally go to sleep on me."

"I'm sorry, Carrots. I haven't slept since we started the tests, and I have no clue what time of day it is."

Judy assisted Nick and got him up from where he was previously sitting down. Upon fully standing back up, the fox let out a ridiculously-sounding yelp.

"Aaah, my paw's asleep!" he exclaimed, feeling the heavy, pins-and-needles sensation in his right foot.

"I'm sure you'll live." The doe turned around and walked the other direction, the portal device still firmly in her grasp. "Anyway, I think I found a way out of this room while you were takin' that nap. You're just lucky that I didn't leave you behind when I discovered a passage, you dumb fox."

Nick started to follow the rabbit's lead, still limping slightly on his right paw before the "asleep" feeling in it fully disappeared.

_Too bad that was just a dream, _Nick thought, _'cause it'd be pretty darn nice if someone was just waiting around the corner to escort us out. Carrots was right, though; there's not gonna be some mammal waiting 'round the corner saying, "Hey, I'm here to rescue you two." I guess it's back to just roaming around and seeing where in the heck all of this walking leads to..._

* * *

"_This is your last chance, you two,_" the unlikable voice echoed across the hall. "_Stop trying to escape, or I'll have no choice but to get rid of the two of you myself._"

"How wholesome," Judy murmured.

"_And by the way,_" the voice over the speakers added, "_all of the cake that was prepared for you is gone. Consider that the consequences of your actions._"

Nick grunted. "Damn, now that's just plain cruel."

The distorted sounds of uncanny, robotic laughter echoed across the area, irritating the fox and rabbit even more.

Clenching his paw into a fist, Nick ran up and kicked a chunk of an old object with a great amount of force.

Judy shook her head. "Feel better now?"

Nick nodded his head and sighed, simply following the rabbit as they made a right. The two came across another unmaintained hallway, the words "Sector A113" barely visible on the wall.

An unidentifiable screeching sound came from behind them, sounding like claws being ran down a chalkboard. Both Nick and Judy turned their heads, their walk suddenly turning into a quick run. Once they went further down the passageway, Judy found an open duct on the wall beside them.

The doe quickly crouched down and crawled inside, the sound of a portal being made resonated soon after (presumably on a visible space that had some sort of gray wall to it). After a few brief moments, Judy popped right back out of the duct and made another portal on the wall on the opposite side of her.

Nick and Judy both passed through, now finding themselves in an area that had similar design to the other office areas that they had previously discovered. At the first open door they could spot, the two stepped right through it without any hesitation.

The door slammed shut, and a light above them came on and illuminated the space. The room was some sort of observation area, presumably meant for workers of the Enrichment Center. A supercomputer sat unused in the corner, a line of digital code scrolling down it. A glass enclosure looked out to another similar room with nothing in it.

Nick tapped his foot as he looked around, his curiosity piqued when he stumbled across a red button to the side of him. "Hey, what's this thing do?"

Judy's eyes widened and she held a paw out to try and stop him. "Don't press the button, it could be another-"

It was too late; the fox had already pressed the button. Nick put his paws behind his back and innocently whistled.

"Okay, don't panic," Judy said. "I got a plan: I'll try to see if there's a way I can get into their system and stop-"

A computerized sound greeted Judy's ears, making them stand up on end. From inside the room that the observation area looked into, a hole had opened up in the middle of the tile flooring. Where the hole had been created, a gray spherical object with some sort of green laser projected on the side of it ascended. The sphere spun in a circle, its laser seemed to scan the circumference of the room before stopping on where Nick and Judy were standing.

The green eye on the sphere turned to shade of yellow, and a computerized noise came from the space. Some sort of ammunition came hurdling slowly towards them from where the laser on the object was.

"Hit the deck, Carrots!" Nick shouted.

He and Judy both separated to opposite sides, ducking down as they braced themselves. The glass that was encompassing the observation area shattered loudly upon impact, and the fox and rabbit both tried to get away from any potential fragments that were scattering around. When it looked like things were okay, Judy was the first to resume as normal.

The doe watched as the sphere rotated in a circular motion again, searching for some sort of target that its laser could lock on.

"Nevermind," she said, taking a deep breath out. "We're gonna need a new plan." Judy turned her head over to the fox. "Nick, do you think you can run up into that room and let the laser lock on you?"

"You want me to get killed right now, Fluff?"

"Just trust me." The rabbit pointed to yet another sheet of glass on a wall a few feet away. "You see that wall over there? If you run over to it and let the laser see you, it'll only fracture the glass if you run away from it in time."

Nick gulped, feeling that there was no other easier options available. He ran into the room with the laser sphere in it, running up to glass wall Judy was pertaining to and flailing his arms in the air.

"Hey, over here!" he childishly exclaimed, continuing to wave his paws around in an effort to get the laser to detect him. "Come and get me!"

The laser locked on Nick, aimed square at his chest. Upon hearing the sound coming from the machine, he knew that he had only a few seconds to get away before the thing fired at him. The sprinted out of the room with a look of terror, panting slightly as he did so. The glass broke on the other succeeding wall just as Judy said it would.

With that being accomplished, Judy took Nick by the paw and dragged him out of the dangerous area and through another unlocked door.

"Let's go!" The doe exclaimed as they rushed down the next hall.

* * *

**_One Hour Later…_**

"Well here we are, Fluff, one hour later," Nick remarked. "Let's just hope your sense of direction is correct and that we're on the right track."

"And when has it been wrong since we started this whole ordeal?" Judy replied. "If it were you in charge, you'd probably have us lost. Heck, you thought we were lost about five times in the last half hour."

Pausing in the middle of the vacant hallway, the doe made her way over to an unlocked silver door that seemed to be hanging wide open. Nick followed her as she walked along the next path laying out before her. Lights strobed and flickered rapidly above them, and the enclosure on both sides of them looked out to nothing but an eerie darkness. As they got closer to the end of the hall, they started to see a little bit of light, coming from what looked like some giant computer screen.

"_Well, it would appear that you two managed to find a way over here to find me,_" an ever-so-familiar voice greeted them.

As they walked over to the source of the voice, they entered an extremely spacious room. In the middle of it all, a giant robotic machine hung from the ceiling. The artificial intelligence consisted of a steel, gray body, with webs of black wiring hanging from the sides of it.

"So this is the robot that's in charge of all the tests…" Nick said to himself.

The yellow dot that served as the robot's "eye" seemed like it was staring into their very souls as they got closer.

"_I would offer to make amends and just happily end things here, but I'm very certain that you two will make things even more complicated than they already are. Therefore, we will commence with my regularly-scheduled proceedings._"

The creepy sound of the large system booting up filled both the fox and rabbit's ears.

A bloop sound echoed across the space, and the operating system began to speak. "_Midnicampum holicithias: The proper term for a specific specimen of toxic flowers, more commonly known as night howlers, capable of inflicting extremely psychological effects on most mammals." _

A brief pause filled the space before the dastardly robot carried on. "_I was installed with specific software, to help prevent me from filling this particular area with neurotoxin induced with genetically enhanced night howler essence. However, the core that stops me from such drastic things seizes to function at the current moment. Please, relax yourselves and let the emitters do their job. The night howler will emit throughout the room in six minutes and counting."_

Blue timers popped up on some screens up on the walls, counting down from the six minute time limit at a steady pace.

With that, Judy's jaw naturally dropped at the fact that time was now an enemy for her and the fox. This was not just some test chamber that they could solve at an ordinary pace. With the neurotoxin now coming into play, it would be a matter of life and death for both her and Nick.

"This is not good," she whispered to herself.


	7. Chapter 7

All that Judy could do at the moment was stand where she was, frozen in place. Her mouth naturally agape, the doe motionlessly watched as the first moments on the countdown clocks above her speedily ticked by.

Cocking her head sharply over to a corner, she could observe several air ducts opening upward. From what assumptions she could make, those ducts were presumably being opened by the artificial intelligence in preparation for the emitting of the toxic essence. Another illuminated plane above her read "_Emission Systems Generating: Approximately 5% Complete."_

Finally regaining her ability to speak again, she murmured under her breath, "Sweet cheese and crackers."

"_Well, do you just plan on standing there __with your mouth hanging wide open__ like a half-wit, hoping that I'll change my mind and deactivate the systems?_" the operating system near the doe said in mockery. "_If I didn't know any better, based on that dumbfounded look you're giving me right now, I would've mistaken you for just another dumb bunny despite all of your feats to get to me."_

The teasing words of the robot reached Judy's ears, and her face ended up replacing her confused expression with one that was frowned and stern in nature. With a grunt, the doe tapped her paw on the ground.

Meanwhile, Nick, in the midst of Judy's consternation, was pacing around a different corner of the gray space. Also appearing to be in a little bit of frustration, the vulpine gazed around the room as he looked for some sort of way to either get out or manage to shut down the giant robotic menace. An orange portal ended up being casted a small height above the fox, causing him to get slightly spooked when it appeared. The portal opened up a few seconds later, and Judy ended up popping right from the other side of it.

Nick turned his head over the rabbit, seeing the look on her muzzle that indicated that she was currently in the middle of conjuring something up within her mind. "Hope you have a good plan, Fluff, 'cause there ain't no way to just shut the stupid thing down." After a brief pause, he additionally murmured, "It's a damn shame that you can't just pull the breaker for this room or somethin'."

Judy shook her head, gripping tightly onto the portal device in her left paw. "Don't be ridiculous," she said, not exactly in the mood for the stupid words that the fox presumably thought were going to be some sort of comical relief. "Don't you think we would've seen it if there was some kind of power grid out in the open? This isn't some game we're livin' in, Nick!"

Right next to where the giant, ever-so-sinister operating system was built, a spot opened up in the cold floors. Similar to what they had encountered on their trek to this particular spot, a gray spherical core with a blue laser being pointed from it had ascended. However, unlike the previous one that they dealt with, this one seemed to scan the room faster as it looked for its new target. As fate would have it, it locked itself right in the middle of where the fox and rabbit were standing as they trailed their thoughts and plans.

The computerized sounds coming from the sphere reached the Judy's ears, making them perk up, she tugged on Nick's side to get his attention. "Nick, run!" she exclaimed.

Naturally, the vulpine entered a state of panic once his mind registered that the laser was locked on him. The fox yipped and sprinted away before the ammunition that the core dispensed could even come out. Judy followed soon enough and dropped onto the floor as the fox ran away like a frightened kit.

_Boom!_

The ammunition coming from the sphere with laser hit the gray wall away from the two mammals. Judy jumped and let out a small gasp upon its impact, and Nick, from a few feet away, looked over with widened eyes and a paw clutching near his chest.

The sphere started to spin across the room, repeating its built-in process all over again like nothing ever happened. Judy immediately picked herself off of the floor and ran over to join the vulpine, who still stood idly in his spot.

"Come on, Nick!" Judy compelled.

As the two sprinted, the laser trailing right behind their tails, Judy quickly relocated an orange portal on a wall located on the far side of the room. After the leporine shot a blue portal underneath them, the two were transported to a different location.

The rabbit peaked her head to the left, and something managed to catch her eye. What caught her attention was a small platform, circular in shape with a small sliver cut within it that seemed to serve as an observational window. It was elevated by four rusty steps, and it also had some sort of red button located within it that served a purpose that they were both unsure about at the current moment.

Judy grabbed onto Nick's paw and dragged him up the four steps (which almost felt like they were going to break apart once their weight was placed upon them). Once they got in the circular "safe zone," the doe crouched down onto the small floor covering the platform, holding her portal device close to her.

"Crouch down!" the rabbit commanded, and the fox nearby did as he was designated.

Judy stealthily peaked through the spot and looked around. From her observations, the laser couldn't detect that they were in this particular spot as long as they weren't visible.

However, the vulpine ended up putting his head through the sliver of a look-out within the platform, and the laser immediately started to run its head back around. Unlike how the rabbit managed to look out without being seen to the unaided eye, the fox just completely stuck his head through and made him bluntly visible to the machine that sought to get him.

"No, get down!" Judy imperatively whispered, pulling the fox back down into his previously huddled position.

The rabbit went back to thinking, trying to quickly figure something out. The time limit didn't make anything easier for her when it came to devising a plan, but within a few short moments she managed to put something together.

As the lightbulb went off in her brain, Judy turned her head back over to the vulpine and said, "Okay, I got a plan. For right now, we're gonna split up."

Nick was taken aback for a moment as he listened in to the idea that the rabbit was proposing. "What the- Carrots, splitting up is, like, one of the _worst_ things to do."

"You need to trust me, okay?" the doe replied, feeling certain that things would go according to plan. "Just keep your head down and away from that laser's range and I'll do the rest. Do you understand?"

Nick silently nodded in compliance, and Judy got back up again and ran down the decrepit steps of the platform.

The laser came near her as she went along, and she let it lock near where she was. Before it could dispense its ammunition yet another time, she swiftly ran away from where it was pointing at. What she figured out was that by doing what she had done, she had a few brief seconds to run to another spot before the system went back to scanning for its target.

_Let's pray this works, _Judy thought as she darted to another corner.

Her head calculated what she needed to do pretty quickly, and she started to execute her plan. Her head surveyed the walls that she was steadily approaching, as well as the system that they needed to shut down one way or another.

Judy fired a portal high above her on the nearby surface. Shortly afterwards, she intentionally let the laser lock on where she was standing. Once it made the sounds that implied that it found a target, she fired another portal near where she stood and speedily dove away.

The plan her brain hatched worked just as she expected it to. When the spherical core released its ammunition, it flew right through the blue portal and right out the orange one, flying right above and heading straight for the operating system. Stretching her neck, the doe looked upwards and watched as the robot ended up getting hit by what was basically its own weaponry.

_Bang!_

The sudden popping sound of ammunition hitting against steel rung in the rabbit's ears, and she backed up as the gigantic piece of machinery started to squirm where it had been hanging from the ceiling. When the strike occurred, it was also observable that the laser seemed to come to a halt for a few seconds, too, leaving enough for Judy to get out of the way.

After running a few paces away, the doe saw something drop out from the robot, hitting the floor with a detectable thud. When it dropped to the ground, she admitted to herself that her curiosity was piqued in the midst of the time-sensitive situation.

The laser started to circumnavigate the perimeter, and Judy mentally confirmed that the strike didn't manage to completely destroy the systems. _Not yet, at least, _she thought. _Perhaps I need to just keep doing what I'm doing and maybe that thing will just seize function._

Her eyes darted back to the countdown clocks, and she noticed that time was ticking away a little bit faster than she had originally thought (as it always seemed to do whenever one didn't wish for it to tick away so quickly). Her mind fully registered to start running again once the five minutes ticked its way to four minutes and fifty-nine seconds.

Something in the back of her head was telling to go grab that object that fell from the machine. Listening to the urge that her mind seemed to be giving her, she nimbly ran into the middle of the hall. Using the mode that picked objects up on her portal device, she lifted up the object in questioning and darted away with it like a thief carrying a sack of stolen goods.

_Now what do I do with this thing? _she asked herself. _I don't have a freakin' clue what it even does, let alone what I need to do with it next._

The object was a core, quite similar to the ones that dispensed the lasers but quite different. Although plain gray and metallic in its appearance, it had a deep yellow "eye" in the middle of it that seemed to survey the room. It was as if the little machine was studying things.

The doe's first instinct was to sprint back over to the platform that Nick was still hiding within, and that was the action that she took next. Still carrying around the core with the portal device, she made her way up the little steps and into the little observatory station. She immediately dropped the core onto the ground, and it hit the flooring with a small bump.

The core gazed around the area, its eye looked as if it was looking at both Nick and Judy. "_Who are you two?_" it asked, intrigued in a way.

Judy got down on the ground, level with the fox who still remained in a stealthy, huddled position.

"What is that thing?" Nick asked. "And why is it asking so many questions?"

"No clue, but we need to get to figure out how to get rid of it, Nick," Judy replied, quickly speaking in an effort to save herself as much as time as she possibly could. "That thing fell out of her, so it had to be part of controls somehow. If my assumptions right, we have to dispose of this thing."

Seeming a little too chill for being in a scenario that could turn deadly if handled improperly, Nick relaxed a place his arm up against the cylinder button that was in the platform they were hiding in. His paw accidentally slipped against it, and a bloop sounded behind him. The fox darted his paw back, thinking he had done something wrong again.

"What did you-" the doe went to reply. She thought that the fox ended up making something get progressively worse by pressing the button, but her peripheral vision noticed something to the corner of her.

She realized what the button's purpose was, as well as what it seemed to be connected to within this hall. Within a corner of the room was a large, oval-shaped container that had some sort of protective covering over it. When it unlocked and opened up, an orange glow came from inside of it. Judy immediately recognized that the cylinder thing was an incinerator, and she started to get an idea.

A buzz sound resonated near them, similar to the sound one hears on a game show when they answer a question incorrectly, A few moments after the buzz, the incinerator locked back up with its shield of protection.

The doe held a paw up to the vulpine. "Wait, Nick," she said, "press that button again."

The fox said nothing in response—no sly responses coming from him for the time being—and pressed the button a second time. After the bloop, just as Judy suspected, the incinerator opened back up.

Within a flash, the leporine scooped her portal device back up off of the ground and picked up the core back up with it again. The core was still darting its eye around and sprouting out its annoying spree of inquiries.

"Stay put!" Judy compelled to Nick. "And press that button when I say so, okay?"

The fox nodded as the doe swiftly ran back out into the rest of the room like a soldier reentering a battlefield.

Meanwhile, Judy made way over as fast those quick and nimble rabbit paws of hers could carry her. Her head cocking back over to the left of her as she continued to run, Judy exclaimed, "Nick! Button, now!"

Giving a quick thumb's-up, Nick called back, "I'm on it, Carrots!"

_Bloop!_

The fox did as he was requested and pressed the button. When he did, on the opposite side of him, the incinerator that Judy was near opened up and let out the undesirable heat that it contained.

Without a moment's hesitation, Judy pressed a button on her portal device and dropped the core that she was carrying right into the small flammable abyss. Not even two seconds later did she hear a small buzzing noise, and the protective covering of the incinerator closed up again.

Right when she turned her body around, a sudden, startling noise sliced its way across the entire room.

_Boom!_

What she heard sounded like some sort of explosion, louder than the bang created by any firework display that she ever witnessed. After the humongous boom sounded off across the place, the ground under her paws started to shake like there was a miniature earthquake going on within the building.

The doe trembled as the floors quaked, struggling a little bit to maintain her balance and stay up on her feet. From the corner of her eye, she could Nick also a little unprepared for the way that the room was swaying. The vulpine from afar seemed to be grabbing onto the thin railing on the platform that he was on, grasping on like to it with all he had.

An additional sound entered the air, coming directly from the machine that they were brawling. It almost sounded like a shout of pain, but a little more computerized in its tone. For a very quick moment, the noise made the rabbit shiver.

The floors stopped shaking around them, and Judy, regaining her ability to remain balanced, started run once again. The doe looked over, among a quick observation that the giant operating system seem to have two cores, similar to the one that just got incinerated, attached to her frame. After quickly looking back at the time (which still had a time limit that she felt certain was plenty of time to do what she needed to do), she repeated the process that she did for the first core for the succeeding ones.

The timer screens suddenly cut out, not reading their series of numbers for a brief moment before coming back on. Judy's ears perked at another nearby sound that they detected, but they ended up drooping upon seeing the source of the noises.

The vents that were presumably going to dispense the engineered neurotoxin were opening further out. Nothing was coming out of them at the current moment, but it was the fact of what would be yet to come from them that made the leporine give a quick but slightly nervous look.

Yet another time, she managed to reposition where the laser's strike was supposed to land. The core, unlike the previous ones, seemed to fly through the air due to the impact being much more forceful than the others.

Warped and distorted noises started to gurgle from out of the machine, a sign to Judy that things were working out the way that she wanted them to. The robot was no doubt starting to experience technical difficulties from what it had endured. What appeared to be a faint amount of smoke started to come from where the robot was, and a few loose sparks started to fall down like raindrops from thick wires that were becoming visible to the eye.

The laser nearby seized for the moment, and Judy sprinted without any hesitation. Building up with a good amount of speed, the doe fired a blue portal a few inches from her feet and swiftly dove right into it.

She came out of the orange portal a good height above the flooring (that way the laser wasn't immediately able to come into contact with her), and she started drop right back down to the ground. A few moments before she could come into contact with the cold ground, she slickly relocated a portal right within her trajectory. When she came back out the orange portal yet another time, she ended up speedily flying through the air a good distance thanks to her gained momentum. The way that she simply flew in and out of the portals and through the air made her look like some sort of trapeze artist.

In order for her to make a safe landing on the ground, she repositioned the portal another time. When she saw the third and final core coming near her, she managed to get a hold of it before gravity took its toll and brought back down to the ground.

Not even taking a few seconds, Judy kept rushing forward. However, in an effort to get to the incinerator as quick she could, she ended up brushing up against some nearby metallic debris that made her scrape her leg, trip and clumsily pummel to the floor.

The laser, which started to encircle the room faster like it was increasing in its difficulty, was coming near Judy at any given moment.

From the observation area, Nick caught sight of the hurt doe and the weapon that was about to think of her as its target. An expression of concern coalescing on his muzzle, he knew that he couldn't just stay put.

"Carrots!" Nick exclaimed, getting up as fast as he could.

The vulpine swiftly breezed down the steps. The laser was locked square near the where the injured doe was, ready to fire. With the adrenaline pumping through him in that moment, the fox sprinted over, picked the doe, who still was holding onto both her portal device that was carrying the core, up in his arms and ran back over to the observation platform.

Once they got to a safer location, Judy looked up at the vulpine and asked, "Nick? W-What are you doing?"

"I couldn't just leave you behind watch you get hurt, Fluff," he responded, feeling slightly heroic for the time being. "That's what I'm supposed to do as your testing partner."

Her heartbeat slowing down from its previously wild rate, the doe smiled. "Awww," she said. "That's been the nicest thing that you've said to me throughout this whole journey." Her mind coming back to the present moment, she asked, "Nick, can you do something?"

The fox nodded in agreement, knowing that now was not the time to question any ideas that she had.

The rabbit stretched a paw as far she could, pressing the button in front of her but barely reaching it. After the bloop, they both knew that the incinerator was about to open. Judy gestured for Nick to run out a few paces, and he did exactly as she said.

"Go long!" the doe remarked, throwing the last core his direction.

The fox managed to grab onto the core as it came near him, looking like he was intercepting a passing football. It almost slipped out of his grip, but he managed to keep a hold of it. The core wiggled and squirmed within his grasp, as if it were almost trying to tell him to let go of it in some matter.

The vulpine ran to incinerator, slickly jumping over the laser's range as he rushed forward. He threw it in to where it needed to go right before the buzzer reverberated around them. Once the locks closed again, the fox was certain that the core had dropped into the flames.

The pop rang near him, followed by the uncanny noises coming from the robotic menace near them that had just been defeated. The laser core seized function, descending back down from its spot within the flooring.

The room stayed awfully silent for a brief moment. The screens all blacked out, lines of code scrolling down them. The sound of thumps coming from the ceiling high above the vulpine made him look up.

Judy quickly made her way over to the fox, smiling a bit with the knowledge that they just managed to take down what was controlling the entire operation of the facility.

_Thump... Thump... Th-_

The doe lifted her head as well, trying to get an idea fo what might have been causing the sounds coming from the ceiling.

"Maybe that's just hail?" Nick said, putting his paws behind his back.

A sudden boom came shortly afterwards, causing the hearts of both mammals to skip a beat. Judy ended up producing a sudden gasp at the sound.

Debris from the operating system started to break off and fall to the floor with a heavy thud. Wires, once kept in a considerably secure formation, now dangled and snaked downward from where they hung. The voice of robotic system started to garble in and out, and it seemed like the whole machine controlling the facility was starting to officially short-circuit.

The floors shook, and the room was starting to break down along with the machine.

"I think we better hit the deck!" Nick remarked, and Judy nodded.

The two started to run to a corner, getting a look back at the disaster occurring as they did, and hit the floors in the midst of the chaos. More pieces of equipment broke off in a sporadic pattern, and Nick and Judy both flinched as it did in hopes that they didn't get struck with anything.

A few seconds later, they saw light peaking inward, coming from the outside world. The two couldn't be any happier to see the sunshine coming outside of Aperture Science for the first time in what felt like a long time. The way that the luminosity peaked in looked similar to the beam that aliens shined down before an abduction was made.

A loud buzz echoed in the corner, presumably from some other kind of signaling device. Judy's ears drooped down at the sound of it, and an unknown voice started to announce its way into the room.

"_This is not a test.__ All major systems are no longer operational," _it declared, making both the hearts of both Nick and Judy beat faster than they already were. "_Enrichment Center is no longer stabilized. __Any personnel, please evacuate the building in a calm, orderly fashion. Once again, this is not a test._"

The two got up and broke out into a run. Suddenly, without any type of warning whatsoever, they felt their bodies being lifted up off of the floor.

Looking down at the ground that gradually started to get further away, Nick nervously gulped and started to panic. Judy held onto the vulpine's paw, looking at him with a look that told him not to be afraid despite what was happening. The effulgence of light becoming brighter and even more dazzling as they ended up going higher and higher up off of the ground.

* * *

**_Some Time Later..._**

"It was all you, Fluff," the vulpine said, shrugging his shoulder as he strolled along, trying to find the nearest exit. "If anything, _I _should be telling _you _that you were a great help 'round here. If I'm bein' honest, I would've never gotten passed some of those difficult chambers awhile back."

Judy giggled under her breath, still smiling widely. "Yeah, you wouldn't have," she breathed. "But you helped out, too. Sure, was there times I wanted to whack you upside the head with the Weighted Companion Cube 'cause you weren't cooperating? Yes, yes there was. Overall, though, you actually made a really good testing partner."

Nick held a paw to his chest, feeling honored. "Well, that is surely high praise," he remarked. After a brief pause, he added under his breath, "So all the testing's done... So what are you gonna do now that all of the action's over with, Carrots?"

"I could always try to sign up for testing somewhere else," Judy replied. "I heard Black Mesa's looking for some new recruits. Perhaps they'll enlist me to be a part of their research team."

The fox snickered at the doe's suggestion. "Har har," he muttered under his breath.

"Seriously, though," the rabbit replied. "There _is _one other facility I considered heading to once this was over. You ever hear of that other hub that Aperture has?"

"Aperture Science _Innovators_?" the vulpine asked in reply. "Yeah, I'm familiar with it. Why's that?"

"Just wondered. They mentioned that place when I was signing up to do this experiment, and thought it'd be something to make note of just in case. I'll be heading to there probably as soon as I can."

Nick simply nodded his head in response. Something from the right corner caught the fox's eye, and he started pointing that direction. "Carrots, I think I see something coming up this way."

A scent arose from nearby as the fox and rabbit made a right. The aroma hit the vulpine, and in response his eyes brightened and a grin started to take form on his muzzle. _Could it be? _he asked to himself.

"That smell," he ended up muttering.

Judy turned her head over towards him. "What about it?"

"It's the cake!" the fox childishly exclaimed in response. "Oh, thank goodness the cake wasn't a lie! Oh, I can only pray that there's some blueberry in it somehow."

The doe snickered, shaking her head.

"What?" Nick replied. "I honestly can't get enough of anything that's got blueberry in it." The fox started walk a little faster down the passageway, the delectable aroma from the presumed cake getting closer and closer within range. "Come on, Carrots," he urged, Judy pausing temporarily as he continued forward. "Let's go get us some of that-"

Nick's words were cut midway, and Judy's ears registered the noise of some sort of unidentifiable machine. The fox suddenly came running back.

What Nick was retreating from was six turrets, three evenly spaced on each side of them. Their sides were out and their lasers were drawn, but none of them deployed despite Nick and Judy both being in range. Alternatively, all six of turrets shut down one by one and went completely idle.

As they all powered down, all six of them seemed to chorus, "_Thank you for choosing Aperture Science._"

"This is it," Nick said hesitantly. "This is the part where they kill us, isn't it?"

Judy shushed the panicked fox. "No, it isn't. Look, they're not even doing anything."

After a short pause, Nick exhaled deeply. "Alrighty then," he murmured. "You lead us outta here, Fluff. Just in case there's somethin' else waitin' around the corner."

From a broken panel on the ceiling, a ray of light was happily peaking in. Judging by that, the exits were going to be coming up sooner than later.

Additionally, the two saw that another flickering light was coming from what looked like some sort of birthday candle. Where the candle was in was none other than the cake that Nick had been going on about. The dessert rested on a platter that laid on a plain, metal table next to a radio that faintly played some sort of jazz music. On the sides of the cake was a small number of plates, a few plastic forks and and a utensil to cut the dessert with.

Nick lit up at the sight of the sweet treat that awaited them and ran up to the table, his tail wagging excitedly. Judy silently let out a delicate chuckle, but her joyous grin quickly faded and transformed into a small frown.

"That's all, though?" she mouthed out loud.

Nick already helped himself to some of the cake, and appeared to be savoring the overall deliciousness and delectability of it. "What do you mean?" he asked, his mouth still full as he spoke.

"I mean, we nearly died a few times and all we're gettin' is a cake?"

"I don't know 'bout you," Nick replied, "but this cake right here is enough of a reward for me, 'cause I'm starvin'."

* * *

_**A Few Moments Later...**_

The circular door locked itself behind the two mammals as they walked along. The light was peaking in above them as they started exploring an even more spacious hallway. On each side of the open space was an elevator, similar to the ways they had an encountered in the chambers but completely transparent.

As Nick and Judy slowly stepped forward, the doors to both elevators unlocked and opened. Within that moment, the two knew where they were at last; they had finally reached the exit.

Within that moment, the two of them understood that they had to go in separate directions.

"So," Nick said, finally breaking the moment of silence, "I'm guessing this is it? This is the exit?"

"Pretty sure it is," Judy replied. The doe started to slowly walk over to the elevator, which still sat there waiting for her to get in it. Before she could step inside, she turned head around again. "Oh, and thanks again for helping me when I got hurt back there," she added.

"No problem, Fluff," the fox replied with a smile. "No problem. And thank _you _for making sure that I didn't get killed by any turrets. Thank goodness there's no more of those anywhere."

Judy couldn't help but laugh. After her giggling died off, she breathed, "Well, I guess I better get going."

Walking over to his designated elevator and turning around, Nick replied, "Bye, Carrots."

The doors surrounding the fox's elevator closed around her. Smiling, he waved to the doe on the opposite side of the room. The leporine noticed, and ended up waving the vulpine goodbye in response.

The elevator started to go up, trailing a few seconds up above the rabbit's. Within that moment of time, the two simply waved to each other before they had reached where the only sight to behold through the enclosure was nothing but gray walls and paneling.

Once that had happened, Nick let out a small sigh. His head peaking upward, the fox could see a small bit of light coming closer and closer into view as he ascended.

He took a step behind him and went to lean back, but noticed the sound of something crumpling underneath his paw. Bending down, he grabbed the crinkled piece of paper that he had stepped on.

Nick stared at the paper, realizing that it was an advertisement of some sort that had somehow got placed here. Below an illustration, similar to the pictograms back in the testing chambers, the words "Aperture Science Innovators" were written on it. His eyes dotted down the paper, continuing to look at what the rest of the advertisement had typed on it. From what he got out of it, it said that their secondary base of operations was currently seeking mammals to participate in their latest experiment involving their newest scientific advancements.

After he got finished reading, the fox dropped the paper from his grasp. Looking blankly at nothing in particular, he started to remember what the rabbit had told him prior to the current moment. _Thought that place would be something to make note of just in case. I'll probably be heading there as soon as I can._

Her words echoed in his head; the doe had sounded quite eager and interested in participating in another type of experiment that was run by this place.

The light of the outside world was steadily approaching, and it was within those moments that Nick had made a decision. Throughout the craziness that he had endured back in the Enrichment Center, he had made a new friend. And he knew that he would want to do whatever testing the other base sent his way, as long as that rabbit was going to accompany him as his testing partner.

* * *

**Author's Note: Hey there, readers! Hope you guys enjoyed the final chapter on this crazy, silly adventure that I wrote involving a certain fox and rabbit duo. And I hope that it was okay the way I ended it: With cake that is _not _a lie! XD**

**Also, whew! This last chapter had a couple of re-writes to get it to what it turned out be. If there's one confession I have to make, it's that action scenes are basically my writing kryptonite. _Hopefully_, though, I managed to write out a good action sequence for this part of the story.**

**As always, feel free let me know your thoughts. Your feedback, good or bad, is gladly appreciated. Also, I know I've said time and time before but thank you to everyone who's kept with this as well as my other works. **

**'Til next time! :)**


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